Midnight at Number Nine Grimmauld Place
by Trygvasson
Summary: A young witch is very excited to meet her hero Harry Potter, who is very old now but doesn't seem to mind entertaining a child. There's a lot she doesn't know about the War, though. That's a bad summary, but basically it's a little scene based on a dream I had, so whatever.


Brigit was very lucky, she knew. She was visiting London with her family for a brief sight-seeing and book-buying trip, and she was staying at the very same bed and breakfast as the most famous wizard in the world! _The _Harry Potter, now nearly 70 years old, had been renting rooms with his wife at Number 9 Grimmauld Place for several months now, the two celebrities had informed Brigit's parents at the breakfast table a couple days ago. While their house down the road was undergoing renovations. There was a particularly unpleasant painting that was proving difficult to extract, apparently, and for reasons that Brigit did not entirely understand, they had had to wait for the family's old house elf to die last year before tackling the project.

Whatever the reasons, Brigit was delighted at this chance to meet one of her all-time heroes and was very much looking forward to telling her friends about it when she went back to Hogwarts for her second year in a few weeks. She was even more delighted when she discovered the world-famous Harry Potter absolutely did not mind when she asked him questions and, even better, would not tell her parents when she sneaked out of her room to talk to him in the middle of the night when she knew he was going to be up snacking in the kitchen. Her parents would scold her no end if they knew, but Mr. Potter didn't.

"We're going to the Ministry of Magic tomorrow, and the muggle zoo, which I'm really looking forward to. Amy told me they have a creature there that's like a cross between a duck and a beaver, but it's not even magical! Can you imagine it?" she chattered as Mr. Potter buttered a piece of toast in the light of a single candle and nodded along with her, smiling.

"It's called a platypus," he said. "It's from Australia, I think. I've been to that zoo, years and years ago. Even younger than you. It's a good zoo."

"Really? That's so cool! Then the day after that we're going to the Wizarding War Museum, before we finally go to Diagon Alley and get my books for the year. I'm really excited about the museum trip, though. There's supposed to be a special exhibit on Albus Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix!"

Mr. Potter nodded, his expression distant, as if lost in memory. "Yes, I was asked to go to the opening reception for it..." He looked at her again and smiled. "Did you know you're staying in the closest historical site open to the public to any former Order safe house?"

"Wow...you mean there's an Order safe house near here? Where?"

"My place," Mr. Potter laughed. "I inherited it from Sirius Black, but it was actually the headquarters during the Second Wizard War."

"Oh." That made sense. Then the other part of what he'd said sunk in. "Wait, you said _this _is a historical site too? I didn't know that."

"Not many realize, but if you look outside in the morning, you can find the plaque."

"What happened here?"

Mr. Potter raised one eyebrow and took a bite of bread. "See if you can figure it out. But no cheating," he mumbled.

Eagerly, Brigit looked around the room, really paying attention to it for the first time since they had checked in a few days ago. She was so excited about being in London she really hadn't thought about the place they were staying. It looked just like a regular house. She could see where some scuffs and scratches in the wall had maybe been repaired over the years, but that was about it. She stood up and trotted into the drawing room, then the dining room, then the foyer, but everything just looked...normal.

"I'll give you a hint," Mr. Potter said from the kitchen. "This is the room you need to search."

She came back to the kitchen, staring at the walls, the ceiling, the floor. She sneaked a glance under the breakfast table where Mr. Potter sat and opened a few of the cabinets at random. Mr. Potter watched, with a knowing smile. She shrugged at him. "I don't know what I'm looking for," she admitted.

"Does anything seem out of place, or unfamiliar? There's really nothing they've changed about this place since the war days, except for cleaning and the linens and the food obviously. Keep in mind this was a muggle house originally."

She looked around again, and her eyes finally settled on two strange objects tucked away on the back of the cookstove. She walked over to examine them more closely. Each was essentially the same, resembling nothing so much as old-fashioned weights. They looked heavy, each with a flat bottom but sort of shaped like a boat otherwise, made of black metal with ancient-looking blackened wooden handles arching up. She looked back at Mr. Potter. "Is it okay if I pick it up?" He nodded. She reached out and found she almost needed two hands to lift one off the back of the stove. She brought it back over to the breakfast table and set it down to puzzle over it, mystified. After a moment, she looked up. "What is it?"

"Your father was muggle-borne, wasn't he? You've probably seen something similar in your grandparents house." She stared at it a moment longer then shook her head. Smiling, Mr. Potter reached over and turned it on the squared-off end so she was looking at the bottom. The shape was suddenly familiar, and she looked up again.

"An iron?" He nodded. "But there's no plug. Grandma's has a plug."

"This one is an antique. Muggles used to heat them over fires before they invented electric ones. Some old wizarding families still keep ones that look more like this but are self-heating. I think it's a status or fashion thing, honestly, and I never really understood it."

"Okay, so what's special about this iron?"

"Look closer. Anything you notice about it?"

"...there's a dent on the side. Actually, it looks like part of the metal was sheared right off."

"It was." She looked up at him, and he looked so sad, although he was still smiling gently. "The original owners of this house were killed in the Second Wizard War precisely because the Order occupied my house down the road. Voldemort wanted this place for surveillance of our headquarters, and the couple who lived here lost their lives because of it. An errant curse blasted the pot of stew they had been cooking on the stove that day, and also damaged that little iron you have there. The other one has a crack right down the center." He shook his head. "The crime was only discovered after the war was over. I bought this place from the nephew who had inherited it, to make into a memorial. This _is _an important historical site, because it's the only memorial to all the collateral deaths in the war. Innocent wizards and witches and muggles who shouldn't have been affected. Who were really the ones we were trying to protect with the war, and who no one really remembers otherwise."

Mr. Potter fell silent, and Brigit suddenly felt very, very small in his presence. How different his life was from anyone else she knew. How different growing up must have been back then, she thought.

Mr. Potter looked down a moment at the crumbs on his plate. He stood up and moved his plate to the sink, then picked up the old iron to replace it on the stove. He smiled again at her, looking tired. "I think it's time you and I both went to bed. Have a good time at the zoo tomorrow, Brigit. Goodnight."

"Goodnight," she murmured back, still thinking about the dent on the iron. Such a little thing to hold any meaning. It was a long time before she got to sleep again, thinking about all the sad things that had happened in this house. But it was good for sad things to be remembered, she decided, even if it was hard. Mr. Potter certainly thought so, and so did she.

**Author's note: based on a Harry Potter dream I had, which is why we end up looking at an iron of all things. That's not something the waking brain would normally come up with, but hey, sleeping brain knows best?**


End file.
